The present invention relates generally to the field of paper products. More particularly, the present invention relates to paper for use by artists, either as individual sheets or rolls or as part of sketch books, sketch pads, or the like.
Various types of artists prepare their artwork on “artist grade” paper. The precise form of the paper may vary. The paper may be marketed and sold in individual sheets, as larger rolls of paper, or bound in sketch books or sketch pads. One issue associated with such paper products in the art context involves bleed-through and show-through of ink. As used herein, “bleed-through” refers to the situation where ink has been applied to one side of the paper and “bleeds through” to the other side of the paper, often rendering the second side of paper substantially unusable to the artist. “Show-through” refers to the situation where, although the ink does not physically bleed through to the unused side of the paper, a “shadow” of the ink is at least partially visible on the second side of the paper, thereby reducing the usefulness of the second side of paper to the artist.
In the case of bleed-through in particular, this phenomenon can severely inconvenience the artist and result in substantial amounts of wasted paper. In many instances, when the ink is applied to one side of a sheet of paper within a sketch book or sketch pad, the ink will saturate several additional sheets of paper positioned below the sheet to which the ink was applied. For example, sketches on an individual sheet of material are often colored with heavily pigmented markers, but the marker bleeds through two or more additional pages. As a result, not only is the second side of the initial sheet of paper rendered substantially unusable, but other sheets may be damaged as well.
Traditionally, artists have used a number of approaches to address the problems of bleed-through and show-through, but each have their own limitations. A simple approach has been to simply not use the back side of the sheet of paper. However, this approach is wasteful in that it results in the need for additional paper usage. Additionally, this does not address severe bleed-through situations, where unused sheets of material may also be damaged. An alternative approach has been to use the back side of sheets of paper, even after the front side has been used. However, this results in lower quality sketches and artwork on both sides of the paper (due to the occurrence of bleed-through and/or show-through in both directions) and can still result in damage to additional sheets of material. In yet another approach, the artist may use substantially thicker sheets of paper. However, this results in a substantial increase in the cost of the paper and the paper's characteristics may not meet the needs or wishes of the artist.